Page 39 of The Dirty Version
Zach’s doctor persona took charge. “Let’s see, Miss Zinnia.
” He rolled a stool to the exam table, charmingly shutting out the other adults.
“I’m Dr. Zach. Our names start with the coolest letter in the alphabet, don’t you think?
Can you help me find a zebra on here, so he can join our club?
” He offered her a cardstock cartoon-animal eye chart. “Can you read this to me?”
He tugged an oversized, floor lamp magnifying glass over to the table, but before he looked at her head, Zach let Zinnia stick her bare feet under the plate-size lens. He met Zinnie’s eye with faux gravitas. “As a medical professional, I think you need to cut your toenails, sister.”
Zinnie giggled.
“For real.” Zach played at sniffing her feet. “If these didn’t smell like tiny human, I would think they’re pterodactyl.” When Twila laughed, too, Zach included her in the game. “Hey, I’m serious! I had twin pterodactyls in here yesterday, right where you’re sitting! They tripped on a trampoline.”
The girls cracked up. Even Janelle seemed to relax. Tash stayed put, begrudgingly admiring his pediatric competence.
He easily persuaded Zinnie to lie face down, her head in a massage-style doughnut pillow at one end of the bed.
He propped a tablet screen beneath her and pressed play on an animated movie so Zinnie could watch it on the floor, and then waved Janelle over, finger to lips, miming stitches with his other hand.
He showed her the three large needles he’d need to numb the site.
He did not know Janelle well enough to realize her fear of needles far surpassed her fear of blood. She began to buckle just as Tash popped forward to catch her with the arm not holding Twila. Twila locked her knees even tighter around Tash’s stomach and began to wail.
“You know what, Miss Zinnia? I have a great idea.” Zach folded a blue hospital blanket into a pillow and placed it on the floor beside the screen.
“Your mom’s going to lie here so you two can have a staring contest through that funny face hole.
Your Aunt Tash is going to sit next to me.
And your sister is going to be in charge of everyone. ”
Zach produced a kid-size stethoscope and entrusted it to Twila, who stayed clamped to Tash but shushed immediately when Zach explained the importance of her duties.
“You put the chest drum right here, and then you listen.” He fit the earpieces, showing Twila austere patience as he spoke.
“Once you’re done with your heartbeat, start looking for one inside Aunt Tash.
” Under his breath: “It might take you a while.”
The glimmer of humor on his face stopped Tash from prickling at the insult. Also, she’d very recently decided to reevaluate her temper. This seemed like it could be good practice.
Zach rolled another stool over, flanking his instruments. He motioned for Tash, with Twila, to sit down. He raised the volume on the floor screen, backdropping the exam room with cackling kangaroos. He filled the three syringes with anesthetic.
“Okay. Zinnia, if you feel any pinches, you just squeeze Aunt Tash’s hand. But I think after this first pinch, you should be fine.”
Tash realized Twila could see the needles. “Is it okay for her to watch this?”
Zach bent, checking in with Twila, who’d moved the cold metal stethoscope into Tash’s shirt. “Little kids actually love watching stitches. It’s just like arts and crafts. Right?”
Twila nodded shyly. Zach brought a light closer to where he’d draped a sterile window around Zinnie’s gash. Zinnie’s small fingers squeezed Tash only once, with the first injection; then she was lost to her cartoons, while her mother lay woozily on the cold hospital floor beside the tablet.
Zach flicked his gaze to Tash. “So? How are you?”
She absorbed the absurdity of the situation.
Her head ached with leftover adrenaline.
Zachary Scott Vandenberg, whom she’d once planned a life with, currently wanted to chat—after he’d just made a cute quip about Tash being heartless.
And although some new self-knowledge might have made her willing to revisit her role in their very acrimonious breakup, Tash wasn’t sure she owed Zach any of her updates.
“I heard they’re making your book into a TV show,” he prompted. “That’s awesome. Sounds like things really worked out.”
“She has a boyfriend.” Janelle reported this overstatement recumbently, with closed eyes. “But don’t let that affect my child. Stay focused. Please.”
Zach’s brows rose, but only slightly, his scissors and suture forceps smooth.
“A boyfriend, huh? Like, a real guy? Or a book boyfriend? Is that what we used to call them?” He glanced at Tash almost nostalgically, as if reliving a fond memory, as if her characters hadn’t been the very wedge that drove them apart.
“I’m happy for you. But if it’s a real person, someone should tell him it gets hard playing second fiddle.
You’re pretty loyal to your fiction, if I remember right. ”
Tash nearly responded by telling Zach it wasn’t hard for Caleb.
And that Zach should watch out—a framework that included “second fiddle” gave his insecurities away.
But instead, she sparked with revelation, recalling a conversation she’d once had with Caleb about anger and fear: Zach had probably been scared back then.
He probably worried for his place in an imaginary ranking system of his own creation.
He probably feared Tash wouldn’t choose him, and he’d expressed that fear as anger.
Suddenly, Tash felt generous. She’d played an equal part in their bad dynamic. They hadn’t known how to excavate their anger, and it burned their house down from the inside.
Bizarrely, she flushed with relief. She felt like crying, or laughing out loud, despite the exam room and the needles and Janelle on the floor. She wanted to tell Caleb about this full-circle, evolved moment.
And even if Zach made a flawed yardstick, Tash still couldn’t help but compare: this man stitching, who’d shunned her for something she’d written, and the man she’d just been writing with, who didn’t feel threatened by her work.
Who’d only ever been supportive.
The blocking of Tash’s next steps became instantly crystal clear. She needed to pen an end and a beginning. She needed to write a way out of the mess she’d created.
She needed to do it skillfully, with great care—because it occurred to her that Caleb’s loyalty might have been to Tash’s fiction, too.